Category Archives: 8Ways

I have just been asked to re-design a current unit of work, which would be used in the classroom, with both current curriculum and 8Ways Pedagogy of Thinking.

At first, I had no idea where to start…no idea. Do I start from an Aboriginal perspective or from my original perspective?

So, being “Implementation of 8Ways Illiterate” I started with what I knew. That is, the unit “Global Environments – Rainforests” from the New South Wales Board of Studies website. Nothing too exciting till my feet “got off the ground” with the idea of aligning two pedagogies.

I am a 43 year old student with three young children. Obviously, they are the most beautiful, smartest, inspiring, wonderful human beings on the planet…that’s my job as their mother to “worship them”. But the mother also asks many, many questions every day as to whether I am doing a “good job” as a parent.

At this point I refer back to my own parents, migrants to Australia over 60 years ago. Migrants who worked hard and valued what was so precious in this country…freedom, land and a future. Four years ago, the first time in my life, I decided to go overseas to my father’s village in the remote mountains to see “where he grew up”. And this is where I say it is “Not Just Aboriginal”.

On reading the 8Ways comment that “Aboriginal perspectives do not come from Aboriginal topics, but from Aboriginal approaches to topics” I realised that this was evident in my own experiences overseas. This remote village is still “behind” in terms of our day to day gadgets. In fact, the electricity supply is near nill, the sanitary systems are a local truck and the feral pigs are your closest nightly neighbours. But these “village people”, in my eyes, have the best life! They don’t go to markets for food, they are markets! They prepare for changes in seasons by drying out abundant foods on the flat rooftops in the summer awaiting the blizzards of the winter. They exchange food and needs.

But the aspect that most intrigued me was language and “growing up native”. Young people instinctively stayed up night after night with the “elders” from the village…sitting and listening to stories and being a part of the community. There wasn’t a TV set in another room happening for them. The expectation was that they were just as valuable in the conversation as the 90 year old smoking his pipe in the circle. The teenagers “adored” the elders and socialised with them. They had an incredible connection to their faith, their equivalent “dreamtime”, their ancestors. The language was “knowledge”. How to prepare foods, where to get a supply from, exchange of land knowledge. I cannot explain the life that existed in this tiny village.

There may have been minimal power supply but the “life generated” was the most powerful experience I have ever had. And so I say, it is “Not Just Aboriginal” who “know” this. Aboriginals and these tiny villages all over the planet have existed for thousands of years and knowledge was transcended from generation to the next. The knowledge “pass-on” dwindled when we started to think we were smarter and had “better ways of doing”. This often comes at the expense of the traditional.

I have seen in this village how an elder can give to a child so much intellect and “natural giftedness” and “timeless wisdom” at the same time that child Skype’s a friend in the city. I pray that I didn’t wait too long to attain their “Ways of Knowing” to pass on to my children before they become just “Dreamtime stories” in a report somewhere.

Recently, I have viewed a documentary run by the ABC called “Kakadu“. I have also explored the 8ways of Learning. How then is Kakadu a learning environment in which Aboriginal perspectives are found not in Aboriginal content but in Aboriginal processes?

This is a challenging question for being a writer who has no experiences of indigenous life and understandings, I cautiously approach my reflections. Cautiously simply out of respect not fear, I want to “as the researchers of 8Ways call it “Get it”.

Through this post, I accept that I am discussing “Kakadu” the place not Kakadu the documentary.

Kakadu, the place, is an environment that has “educated” its inhabitants for thousands of years. It is a place of knowledge that continues to impart itself on its modern inhabitants, the traditional owners as well as those co-existing to continue to “hold together its magic”.

It is a place where the “how” of learning is reflected in its teachings. The “how” is reflected in its communal gatherings; its reflected in its language and sharing; its reflected in its survival skills; its reflected in its art; its reflected in its living. Traditional owners knew that passing on “the how” of learning was a necessity for existence, survival and the evolution of its people. And they knew that it had to be passed on in different “ways“.

“Rather than focusing on labeling the “what”, we’ve been seeking the “how” of Aboriginal pedagogy in a collaborative effort between the education department and the Aboriginal community. On this journey it has become clear to us that there are common points of intersection between the pedagogies of different cultures, when you start examining the “how” rather than the “what”.

Dr Tyson Yunkaporta

Kakadu, showed these intersections of pedagogies of different cultures. The traditional owners who held the “chest of knowledge” of the land, seasonal changes, animals, food stock and flora. And the rangers who assimilated to this knowledge to best serve their needs and the needs of the traditional owners and their communities. Together they worked out “the best thing for this place. It’s about working (and learning) together.”

Kakadu is a protected place. A respected place. A place of importance to both sides of the “traditional and non-traditional fence.”

As a traditional owner from Field Island expressed in the documentary:

We have to protect these stories, their history, their artworks because that is what we educate our kids with. History, Science and Culture have found a common ground here. Then it makes it easier for all of us to look after each other.”

By protect he means to pass the “how of learning” on to the next generation and to pass it on with authenticity and respect.

To grasp this concept further I had to go back to the end of the documentary where he comments:

“ Look after the land, the land looks after you…How you look after the land makes you who you are, without land, you’re nothing.”

This comment demonstrated a comradeship between the people and the land. The traditional owners worked together , teachers and learners, and they knew that knowledge had to be passed on from generation to generation to continue this harmonious and protected existence. “How” they passed it on was critical and therefore, the Kakadu environment sustained “community, discussion, skills development and survival”

“Old ways are recognised as the best ways”

Protecting, that is “the how of learning”, with a helicopter, traps and a gun, which was clearly demonstrated in Kakadu the documentary, is easily done without the “how of learning by traditional owners”. But the protective nature of co-existence, respecting the land and its people is something that needs to be “taught” through different ways…suggestively, the 8 ways.